


Just About

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: Awkward Crush, Crushes, F/M, Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-09-26 19:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9918983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: It’s ridiculous, really





	1. Everything and Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I don’t know. I need a palate cleanser after finishing Season 8, and I was “inspired” by an Elvis Costello song. So 300 words here, and plans for a few more of these, most likely all set in season 1.

She smells like heaven. Well. Not really. She doesn't even wear perfume. She smells like drugstore shampoo and coffee. But it's heaven to him. Legitimately the stuff of dreams. Or it would be, if he slept. But he can't sleep, because she smells like heaven.  

Because her cheek blushed when he kissed it, and the warmth still lingers on his lips. The silk-smooth feel of her skin stays with him, and he absolutely cannot sleep.    

It's ridiculous, really. He asked, near enough. 

_Why? So I can be another one of your conquests?_

_Or I could be one of yours._

He put it out there, and she turned him down. _Shot_ him down, if he's honest with himself, and that's that as far as the possibility of any after-hours "research" between the two of them goes. That's that. 

But she smells like heaven, and he can't decide if she's adorable or dead sexy or both at once. He can't decide if it's her legs he's into or her eyes or the fact that she's a complete bad ass. Or maybe it's how smart she is. Book and street and everything in between, and then there’s the mouth on her. She’s _funny._ Cutting, but not quite mean. Not quite, and she’s not the least bit impressed by him. 

Not the least bit, and can’t be that, can it? 

It might be that, because he hasn’t worked like this for anything in ages. For anyone. He hasn’t had to. Hasn’t _wanted_ to, and what the hell _is_ it about her?  

Maybe it's everything. She catches him, flat-footed and tongue-tied all the time, and maybe it’s every damned thing about her.  

Maybe whatever it is, he needs to get over it. 

He asked. She shot him down. And that's that. 


	2. Seemingly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was supposed to be bored by now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More palate cleansing.

He was supposed to be bored by now. Long before now. She'd have bet on it. She _has_ bet on it, in a manner of speaking. She's been confident. She's brushed off innuendo and anted up to Lanie and Espo and Montgomery. Anted up to everyone brave or dumb enough to give her so much as a sidelong glance about it. About him and their "arrangement." 

_A week, tops . . ._

_A couple . . ._

_A few . . ._

But they've barreled past a couple, and if she's honest, a few is already disappearing in the rear-view mirror, and he doesn't seem bored. 

He seems a lot of things: Callous, immature, smug, vain, obtuse, reckless, and oh-so-very annoying. He seems hell bent on really playing out whatever this is. Ego, maybe? 

But that doesn't fit. Not exactly. 

She thinks back to the street. To what she'd meant to be her parting shot and the moment right before. 

 _Or I could be one of yours . . ._  

She thinks of what he seemed then. Boyish, delighted, smitten. Shy, or something very near to it. 

She thinks of all the other things he's seemed since. The not-so-terrible things she isn't always big enough to admit: Curious, astute, invested, feeling. 

It's the last one that gets her. It  _interests_  her, or it would if she'd let it. 

Because for all his antics, she's seen him somber, too. Gut-punched when he does the math on how many _I'm so sorry for your loss_  calls she must've made over the years. Coldly furious at a foul-mouthed prep school punk, who's used to getting away with everything, and that doesn't seem new at all. It doesn't seem recent, and she wonders about it. 

She'd wonder if she'd let herself, but she won't. She bites her tongue to keep from asking and tries remember what she knows about Richard Castle, best-selling novelist. What's  _known_ about him out in the wide world, because that's where he exists. On billboards and book jackets and slick studio sets. At rooftop book parties and on the mayor's speed dial. 

That's where he exists, and she'd do well to remember that, whatever he seems, now and again. Whatever it is he's determined to play out. 

It's ego, she decides, and it doesn't pay to wonder. He'll be bored soon enough. 

_A month, tops . . ._

_A couple . . ._

_A few . . ._

 (But he doesn't seem bored.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the warm response to the first of these. 
> 
>  


	3. Just A Little

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes he thinks she likes him, just a little. 
> 
>  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A continuation of this Drabble series, because, for the moment, they keep coming. 

 

* * *

 

Sometimes he thinks she likes him just a little. 

  
Most of the time he's absolutely sure she doesn’t. She yells a lot, and she’s prone to violence. Not the fun kind, either. She pokes. _Hard._ And she has this thing about twisting his ear like he's some Dickensian street urchin. At any given moment, he’s pretty sure she doesn’t like him one bit. 

But every once in a while, he catches her staring straight ahead with the corners of her mouth turned down hard. Every once in a while, he spies a wicked glint in her eye, and he's pretty sure she trying not to smile. He racks his brain every time. He drives himself up the wall, trying to remember what he just said or did. What he _didn’t do_  that she thought he’d been thinking about doing . . .  

It’s stupid. Insane, really, because what does it matter whether she likes him or not? He’s  _in._  One strategic phone call and absolutely everything he’d wanted has fallen into place. Absolutely everything. 

He’s writing like a fiend. He’s up nights willing his fingers to keep up with his brain. He’s scrawling down details every waking moment on every scrap of paper that comes to hand. His mind hums along, four levels deep, while they work. While they bicker and joke and turn each other inside out to get the job done. His and hers. 

It’s everything he’d wanted all those miserable months with his marriage unraveling and the words gone. Every last thing, so what does it matter? Smile or no smile. Whether she likes him a little or a lot or not a bit. What does it matter?  

  
There’s the obvious answer. The obvious conclusion that everyone's jumped to. His mother. The whole damned precinct. Alexis. That bothers him more than he'd like.  

_You always say you have to love your characters . . ._

The glint of cynicism bothers him. The flash of fresh scars from all the upheaval with Gina. The divorce. Before and after. Everything up until these last few weeks, and it  _bothers_ him that even his kid thinks it's obvious that Kate Beckett the shiny new thing. That "research" is code for business as usual.

It bothers him, because it's ridiculous. And because it's kind of a fair cop. It has been, historically, but he’s done with that. Mixing business with pleasure. A lousy metaphor for him and Gina, anyway, which is why he's done with anything that even looks like a relationship. 

_You always say you have to love your characters . . ._

It's ridiculous. He doesn’t have to. And he definitely doesn’t . . . 

And so what if he did? So what if he mentally goes to tape and draws up freaking  _battle plans_ to see if he can leave her fighting off a smile? 

So what if he loves Nikki Heat? Kate Beckett is most definitely not Nikki Heat, and she doesn't even like him. 

Except every once in a while, it seems like she does. Just a little. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 500 words this time. The first and second were 300 and 400, respectively. I'm not going to lock into that pattern, I don't think, but each came out close, and so I decided to challenge myself to shape them into an even hundred.


	4. Kind of

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “He’s kind of a dork.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another 600 words.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He’s kind of a dork. 

She’s trying to process that. _Still_ trying to process it. She’s been sitting with it a while, and a lot has happened. Nothing at all and a lot. 

She’d told him. About her mom. About her dad. About  _her,_  more or less. Maybe a little less, but more than most people know. Quite a bit more than anyone but Lanie, maybe. More altogether than Ryan or Espo or even the Captain, though they know her in bits and pieces. They know her from guarded revelations over the occasional beer. From gossip that never quite gets stale. Never quite. 

But she’d told _him._ Castle, who is a thorn in her side. Who is the nosiest, interfering-est, most emotionally tone deaf person she’s ever met when he’s caught up in one of his parlor trick cold readings. Castle, who loves to run roughshod over everyone and everything, especially her. 

Castle, who’s kind of a dork. 

She’d told him. 

She can’t figure it out. He’d been happy enough with his own story. 

_I noticed your watch. It’s your dad’s, right?_

He’d been more than happy enough, and she’d like to think it was about knocking him down a peg. She’d like to think telling him was about wiping some self-satisfied look off his face, but there wasn’t any. Not by then. Not after White Plains and an eerily calm conversation about fathers and daughters and getting away with murder, and even that’s not it. Sudden, absolute confidence that he could’ve kept the secret. That he  _would_  have if she’d asked him to. 

And even that’s not why she’d told him. Not entirely. 

Because she’d _started_ telling him well before that. She’d started the minute she let her feet carry her to his doorstep for some unfathomable reason. She’d started telling him before he even opened the door. She’d started telling him as she lingered in his hallway, stalling long enough that she was suffocating in her winter coat. Feeling wordlessly stupid for being there and finally screwing up the courage to knock. 

She’d started telling him the minute the door opened on that bizarre scene. Violent green mud masks and his hair standing straight up. She’d gone there for words—for an ending to Melanie Cavanaugh’s story—and wound up in the moment that hasn’t quite ended yet, even though she’s been home a while. She’d wound up pouring her heart out and leaving him there at her desk like the fixture he’s become. 

It isn’t because of who he is, though she sees now that’s what had brought her there. She sees now that she’d gone to see her favorite author. The man whose words have given her the only kind of closure she’s known for a decade, but that’s not who she’d found when the door swung open. 

That’s not who’d perched tentatively on the desk next to her, self-consciously trying to smooth down his hair. Really, _really_  wanting to switch off the storyboard with its skeletal outline. Really,  _really_  wanting to explain that he’s not usually home of an evening playing laser tag with his kid. Really, _really_  wanting to point out that his mother lives with him, he doesn’t live with her. Really, _really_  wanting to slip back into the skin of who he pretends to be a lot of the time, but not letting himself. 

She’d knocked on the door of her favorite author and found him instead. She’d told him her life story. The bits it’s been boiled down to. She’d told him. Because he’s kind of a dork.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is set just after A Chill Goes Through Her Veins (1 x 05). The others are more loosely woven throughout S1, but this episode has always felt like an important turning point to me. 


End file.
